Lithography represents over 35% of the cost of manufacturing integrated circuits. Because this is a significant portion of the cost of an integrated circuit, reducing the costs associated with lithography and increasing the efficiency of the lithography process are important to lowering the overall costs associated with the manufacture of integrated circuits.
Presently, reticles that are used as masks in the lithography process are manually handled during storage and transport and data related to each reticle is stored on an ad-hoc basis. This leads to inefficient reticle utilization due to missing or lost reticles, over or under inspection of reticles, and over or under cleaning of reticles, or a combination of these or other problems such as reticles being in the wrong locations when needed for processing.
It would therefore be advantageous to have a reticle management system that allows a user to assess current data corresponding to various reticles and to manage the various reticles accordingly.